Introduction
The idea of border-crossing television in East Asia can refer to a number of manifestations in
various stages of television production, circulation, and consumption. The possibility of shows trave-
ling across borders has always been contingent upon the available communication technologies
(e.g. satellite TV, recording formats like DVD, MPEG, streaming), mediators (ethnic-Chinese com-
munities, small capitalists), and the discrepant notion of intellectual property. Compared to twenty
or thirty years ago, there is definitely a more concerted effort at the state and industry level to
co-invest and profit from multiple integrated and specialized markets. Adaptation, mutual reference,
format trade, and other industry practices have created audition shows, talk shows, and TV dramas
with familiar, transcultural currency. This development presents significant challenges for how we
conceptualize television. For example, how are we to understand television beyond the national
border not just for its economic value, but also as aesthetic expectation? In this section, we have two
chapters that comment on the ideological ramifications of border-crossing TV drama in East Asia.
In Chapter 7A, Anthony Fung addresses a range of border-crossing television cases in East Asia.
These include Hong Kong TV broadcasters’ domestication of Japanese TV drama, Guangdong
transborder consumption of Hong Kong television, China–Hong Kong co- productions, Hong
Kong TV’s remakes of Korean films, and successive, hybrid drama adaptations of a Japanese
comic book into a Taiwanese, a Korean, a Japanese, and then a PRC Chinese drama. In each case,
gender, capitalistic, and state ideologies are at play, often yielding conservative representations
such as the lack of female freedom or state-sanctioned modernity.
Hsiu-Chuang Deppman’s chapter (7B) undertakes a close examination of the popularity of
the Korean TV drama My Love from the Star and the Japanese TV drama Hanzawa Naoki in East
Asia around 2013. It further critiques the representation of Confucian ethics—such as the affir-
mation of erudite masculinity, the virtue of the father figure, and filial piety. In both series, such
moral high ground further justifies capitalistic actions.
Compared to other border-crossing television genres, TV dramas have attracted the most
research attention. This is owed partly to the media studies and audience research that impacted
generations of Western-trained East Asian scholars. With the fast-changing regional audio- visual-
digital industries and platforms, television studies in East Asia will have to incorporate a spatial
and mobile perspective, paying more attention to cross-media and state initiatives of cultural
governance.